/// i don't remember any of it not when the bars closed not the screaming and shouting not bill meeting the other guy at the door with the rifle not mickey saying something about how she was going to screw him not if it was serious like the summer with johnny rice down from kahnawake to do high steel or just someone she'd brought home just to bring him home or if something really bad had gone down the way she would bring them sometimes not just come alone to tour my room but whatever it was I don't remember a thing and that's really nice

/// so this can be another kind of story a story with lots of description vivid writing like for a christmas present how we crept down the stairs my brother bragging that he'd heard it he always bragged about things like that because i was the light sleeper i was the one who always woke up and he never did and he'd heard it he'd heard it someone had shot off a gun he was sure bill had shot off a gun mickey had brought someone home and bill had shot off a gun so there we were creeping down the stairs like for christmas maybe to see who was dead or who was in the house but slowly slowly down the stairs to the livingroom where the christmas presents would be if there ever were any or if we didn't open them christmas eve after everyone was sufficiently loaded not to notice then sneak away to miss one of the great drunks of the year

/// but there we are on the stairs and we're looking into the livingroom which isn't one storey down or three but two the floor above where the shot was fired and there it is christmas time confetti time even if it's summer there's confetti all over the livingroom small pieces of coloured paper everywhere so that we smile and giggle like we were still the two little kids we knew we weren't confetti confetti confetti confetti different millions of tiny pieces of confetti because that's what happens when a thirty calibre bullet comes up through a ceiling and through a two inch thick wooden coffee table and an eighteen inch thick pile of magazines the upper three to six inches of the magazines just explode into confetti confetti and there we are laughing and picking up the little pieces of paper and throwing them into the air and examining them closely a christmas present to ourselves without saying a word because maybe there are no words after all and no story certainly no story and who cares anyway confetti confetti whether there are any words or any story but just this moment this one long perfect moment it's a lyric poem when you can smell the summer air through the open window and see the dappling of the light along the street spreading from the shade under the trees the dappling of the small pieces of paper spread across the bright morning light in the livingroom all those perfect descriptive things of a perfect moment held forever that is the morning a rifle was shot off inside the house and no one died no one died no one died confetti confetti and if they did it certainly wasn't you confetti confetti you're still there that's right it's a ticker tape parade and you're the astronaut returned from the moon and you're giggling confetti confetti

/// or wherever it is that parenthesis you go to is located so that by now you've gone to the window and you're throwing those little bright coloured pieces out confetti confetti with your brother while everyone else sleeps off a drunk and you laugh and you laugh and you don't even remember the story not the littlest little thing about it and why tell stories anyway why tell stories at all why not just curl up inside this one moment this one brilliant perfect confetti coloured moment before time resumes

/// why not forever?

this story first appeared in text 8 and features in Sarah's book die tinkerbell die